He reached out and took her unwilling hand, bending back the fingers one by one. “They're beautiful. See how cleverly they work. There's not a scientist living can reproduce their mechanism. No one knows how they grew to be like that.”
His tone became tender. “Santa's been bad. She's been treacherous and cruel: a faithless wife and a menace. Merely to punish her wouldn't undo her evil. Only she can do that.”
For the first time the Major spoke. “At what are you driving?”
Varensky made no attempt to answer him. He seemed not to have heard. He sat cross-legged on the floor, folding and unfolding Santa's fingers, while his grotesque shadow squatted on the wall behind him. He looked like a kindly, embarrassed boy, trying to say something to the sulky girl so that it should not sound too wounding.
“I wonder whether Santa's husband ever saw a woman when she was dead. There's no light in her eyes. She can't say that she's sorry. Last week I saw hundreds in the ditches about Kiev. They weren't lovely. We mustn't let our Santa become like that.”
He turned to the Major with a slow smile. “Must we? You wouldn't like to think of the woman you had loved—”
The Major took a step into the room and stood biting his lips, glooming down at Varensky.
“You and I, sir, view our duty from hostile standpoints. I care for this woman infinitely more than you can ever care. But I care still more for my country. She's betrayed it a score of times. Shall I, because I am her husband, stand by and allow her to betray it? Had I accomplished the purpose that brought me here to-night, my heart would have been broken. To have put handcuffs on her wrists and to have sworn away her life, do you think it would have cost me nothing? The very judge who sentenced her would have shunned me.”
The Little Grandmother looked up. She spoke gruffly. “And what would have been the use of your suffering? Society would have been revenged. It would have washed its hands, like Pontius Pilate. It would have smiled smugly, believing she was wrong and it was right. It would have gone on its way, manufacturing more criminals like her. The old evils that have made her what she is would have continued, while she—” She snapped her fingers furiously. “Like the women in the ditches about Kiev.”
When the room had grown silent, Varensky covered the Major with his mocking stare.